Juno News - December 15, 2025


U.S. Ambassador weighs in on collapsed trade talks and steel layoffs

Topics
steel layoffs layoffs fentanyl
Mentioned
Pete Hoekstra Mark Wiseman Mark Carney Trump Kristen Hillman Jameson Greer Kirsten Kearny Merry
Another MP Crosses the Floor How Canada Became a Hotbed for Antisemitism

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

157.53

Word count

3,358

Sentence count

193

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ambassador Pete Hoekstra joins us to talk about the new trade deal between the United States and Canada, and why he doesn t see this as a reset for trade negotiations going into 2026. He also talks about the impact of the proposed tariffs on aluminum and steel, and the impact on the Canadian economy.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 All right, we're going to go straight to our guest today.
00:00:06.600 It is U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra.
00:00:09.220 Joining us, welcome, Ambassador.
00:00:11.540 It's great to be with you. Thank you.
00:00:13.720 Let's start with the announced changes last week.
00:00:16.180 Your Canadian counterpart, Kristen Hillman, leaving.
00:00:20.100 She was also lead trade negotiator for Canada, as you're aware,
00:00:24.460 now to be replaced by a personal friend of Prime Minister Kearny's
00:00:29.020 by the name of Mark Wiseman.
00:00:31.340 Do you see this, and perhaps if you're speaking for the president,
00:00:35.380 does the president see this as a reset for trade negotiations going into 2026?
00:00:40.760 Oh, I don't see that at all.
00:00:43.420 I've known Kirsten now for close to a year.
00:00:48.160 Got a lot of respect for her.
00:00:49.580 She's done a phenomenal job in Canada, or for Canada, in the United States. 0.85
00:00:54.860 She's been there, I think, close to nine years.
00:00:56.980 I think early on when I met her, the indications were,
00:01:03.000 hey, Pete, you know, I plan on staying for a little while,
00:01:06.100 but I doubt if I'm going to be here another three or four years.
00:01:09.720 I mean, nine years overseas and a diplomatic posting is a long time.
00:01:14.580 So, you know, I think we thank her for her service, not only to Canada,
00:01:19.020 but for the excellent work that she did and the great relationship
00:01:22.720 that she helped develop between the U.S. and Canada.
00:01:27.700 You don't see this as a reset?
00:01:29.300 I mean, because, of course, she was lead negotiator.
00:01:32.500 And so, in the past, of course, we've heard some criticisms by the president
00:01:36.700 suggesting that, you know, the Canadian team has been particularly hard to deal with,
00:01:43.700 tough to deal with, perhaps.
00:01:44.920 Now we're having a change in terms of who is doing what and leading these negotiations.
00:01:51.520 You don't see that as a reset going into the next year?
00:01:54.560 I don't.
00:01:55.380 I mean, that's a question for your prime minister to answer,
00:01:59.220 not for the U.S. ambassador to Canada to answer.
00:02:02.760 It's, like I said, I think from our perspective, she's been an asset in the time that she's worked
00:02:10.540 in the United States, and we appreciate her for the service that she's done.
00:02:17.080 To your knowledge, did the president encourage some kind of change?
00:02:20.240 Did he encourage Prime Minister Carney maybe to change things up a little bit,
00:02:23.760 considering the fact that our talks basically have failed up to this point?
00:02:28.700 No, I don't, I'm not aware of anything like that at all.
00:02:33.400 No, I mean, I think, you know, it's pretty clear in terms of that we're getting close to an agreement.
00:02:39.980 I think it's pretty clear, at least from the U.S. perspective.
00:02:43.800 I, you know, I won't say for the Canadian perspective, but from the U.S. perspective,
00:02:48.800 it's pretty clear why negotiations broke off shortly before Thanksgiving.
00:02:54.880 Well, you're talking about the ads, of course, right?
00:02:57.780 Well, like I said, I think it's fairly obvious.
00:03:01.000 I think the president made his feelings very, very clear.
00:03:05.260 I think I've made my feelings pretty clear, but good.
00:03:09.480 I don't represent, I don't bring my personal feelings here.
00:03:13.040 I represent, you know, the position of the president of the United States and America's position.
00:03:18.200 And yes, those ads were not very helpful to moving forward on the getting to a trade agreement.
00:03:27.120 Something that would have benefited the people of America would also have been of great benefit,
00:03:31.580 economic benefit to the people of Canada.
00:03:34.480 Because it dealt with aluminum and steel.
00:03:36.220 And of course, as you know, we've had layoffs now at Algoma Steel.
00:03:41.360 The CEO of that company came out and said, well, it was largely due to the tariffs.
00:03:47.280 But if we were close to a deal on steel and aluminum, could those layoffs have been prevented
00:03:52.640 if the ads had not come out when they did?
00:03:55.580 And the deal that was apparently on the table, you've spoken about this yourself, Ambassador,
00:04:00.900 had come out and borne fruit, as it were.
00:04:03.900 I don't think there's any doubt that, you know, everybody believed that we were close to a deal.
00:04:09.880 Canadians believed that the Canadian negotiating team believed it.
00:04:13.260 The American negotiating team, excuse me, believed we were close to an agreement.
00:04:19.580 You know, but since the details of that agreement were not, are not public.
00:04:25.940 And since, you know, even when you get to a deal, if you only have that far to go,
00:04:30.120 you don't have a deal until everything is done.
00:04:32.080 So it's possible that those jobs could have been saved.
00:04:37.060 You know, it's, you know, bottom line is if we'd reached an agreement,
00:04:41.140 we would have reached it on four or five critical areas.
00:04:45.040 We would have been steel, aluminum.
00:04:46.900 You do that, that has a big impact on autos.
00:04:49.960 While automobile final production was not addressed, intended to be addressed in this agreement.
00:04:55.700 If you're dealing with steel and aluminum, there's a lot of steel and aluminum in automobiles.
00:05:00.060 And you would have moved forward, I think, on, on the auto issue as well.
00:05:03.860 And then energy and uranium.
00:05:05.760 It would have, as both the president and the prime minister had indicated, it would have put wins on the board.
00:05:15.980 You put wins on the board.
00:05:17.520 You develop a relationship that says, okay, let's go on to some of the other stuff and move on.
00:05:21.860 Yeah, I mean, you get one win and then it fills momentum and you can start adding to those.
00:05:28.520 And so we have a premier in Ontario, as you're aware, who objected to that deal or what he'd heard of it anyway,
00:05:35.320 in terms of not including the auto sector.
00:05:37.720 I think he wanted the deal to include everything rather than piecemeal sort of arrangement in which, you know,
00:05:44.580 you deal with steel and aluminum one day, you know, the auto sector another.
00:05:48.860 And what we ended up with instead were layoffs that, if I heard you correctly, Ambassador,
00:05:54.660 might have been avoided if that deal had been allowed to move forward.
00:05:58.160 So in a way, those ads led directly to the layoffs.
00:06:03.440 Well, I mean, you're going to a place that I can't go, like I said.
00:06:06.100 They might have been averted depending on what the final agreement looked like and those types of things.
00:06:13.320 But, yeah, the bottom line is we didn't end up where we believed we had a very good chance of ending up by Thanksgiving.
00:06:23.420 You know, who did what, how it got there, you know, that will be for a lot of pundits
00:06:29.760 and for you, for people like yourself to, you know, analyze and say, okay, we could have been here,
00:06:38.300 we could have been there.
00:06:39.620 I'm just giving you kind of the facts as I know them, that we were close to an agreement.
00:06:44.980 The ads didn't help.
00:06:46.740 Beyond that, you know, there's not a whole lot more that I could add.
00:06:51.400 There's been a lot of talk about the possibility of a terminating of the USMCA in the new year in favor of bilateral agreements.
00:07:01.700 The president has spoken about this.
00:07:04.980 Others have spoken about that.
00:07:06.500 Trade Representative Jameson Greer spoke about this.
00:07:09.520 On the Canadian side, you've had people kind of try to downplay that.
00:07:13.540 Where is the truth in terms of your sense of where the president wants to go?
00:07:17.260 I mean, I've heard him say that he would rather have bilateral deals.
00:07:22.460 What is your sense of where we're headed in 2026 on that front?
00:07:26.380 Well, I mean, we're just starting the review process.
00:07:30.140 You know, there's been public testimony and those types of things.
00:07:34.500 There are folks that are in favor of a three-party agreement, again, and continuing that.
00:07:40.220 There's others, including the president, who have said that, you know,
00:07:43.460 maybe, you know, three bilateral agreements gets us further along.
00:07:49.840 But, you know, we're just starting the process.
00:07:51.720 All we know is that the agreement that was formed five, six years ago said there will be a review.
00:07:59.320 Everything's on the table.
00:08:01.220 And that's the process that we're going to.
00:08:03.020 I mean, I think right now everybody recognizes that more trade between the United States and Canada is a positive thing.
00:08:11.720 Talking to a lot of folks in your manufacturing sector, your financial sector, your energy sector.
00:08:17.800 Business people want this agreement moving forward.
00:08:23.600 And they see opportunities to grow the relationship, grow the economic prosperity that both countries enjoy because of a close trade relationship.
00:08:35.800 They'd like to see this get resolved.
00:08:38.720 The sooner, the better.
00:08:40.820 Uncertainty in the business environment, you know, just kind of puts a damper on getting things,
00:08:47.440 get, you know, investment and those types of things that create the prosperity, create more jobs,
00:08:53.020 create more economic activity and those kinds of things.
00:08:55.580 So let's get to an agreement.
00:08:58.260 You're probably aware that there may be a referendum, an independence referendum in Alberta.
00:09:03.900 My understanding, based on my conversations with people who are putting forward that movement,
00:09:10.460 is that they've had conversations with high-ranking officials,
00:09:14.020 maybe even some connected with the Trump administration on moving forward with Alberta independence.
00:09:21.320 To what degree does any of that factor into your mindset going into the new year?
00:09:26.740 It doesn't factor into my mindset.
00:09:29.440 My mindset is very, very clear based on the priorities that the president and his team have laid out for me.
00:09:35.900 Do everything that you can to promote trade and prosperity between the two countries.
00:09:40.640 Continue to foster a strong military alliance.
00:09:45.320 And let's get this fentanyl thing and drug thing, cartels, and that, let's get that on order. 0.98
00:09:52.340 Those are under, are under control.
00:09:54.840 Those are the issues that, you know, I'm focused on.
00:09:58.580 Those are the things that the president and his team want me focused on
00:10:02.080 and this office to be focused on and this embassy and our consulates around, around the country.
00:10:08.680 A lot of this other stuff may be interesting things to talk about, but it's not on my plate.
00:10:13.760 Which leads me nicely to Mark Wiseman, who's going to be the next person,
00:10:18.100 is going to be your Canadian counterpart and presumably involved in trade negotiations.
00:10:23.760 He, if you've examined some of his statements in the past, actually wants a loosening up of regulations
00:10:29.860 in terms of bringing people into the country, temporary foreign workers, that sort of thing,
00:10:35.320 which seems to fly in the face of the views by Americans, specifically of the Trump administration.
00:10:41.040 No, we need tighter security measures in order to prevent the flow of drugs into our country
00:10:45.840 and to stop the terrorists and so forth as well.
00:10:49.160 Does that raise any red flags for you in terms of Mr. Wiseman's views on that particular issue?
00:10:56.520 I haven't talked to Mr. Wiseman.
00:10:59.160 I'm assuming he'll be under the same constraints that I'm under.
00:11:04.180 You know, we may have, in certain issues, we may have our own personal views,
00:11:08.520 but at the end of the day, I am the personal representative of the president of the United States to Canada.
00:11:14.240 You know, the relationship that the prime minister and your new ambassador will have,
00:11:20.980 that's defined by Mark Carney.
00:11:23.520 All I can say is that, you know, currently the Canadian government has been working very closely with us
00:11:30.940 on kind of coordinating, you know, our activities against the drug cartels, against fentanyl,
00:11:38.800 because we both believe that we're losing way too many people each and every day to the evil of fentanyl.
00:11:48.180 And so on those issues, we're, you know, we're aligned.
00:11:54.040 We're getting, and we're getting closer to, we're aligned, but, you know,
00:11:58.340 we're getting more aligned in terms of tactically, how do we control and how do we win on this
00:12:04.920 so that we get to a point where the president and the prime minister, again, are in agreement.
00:12:10.420 Again, one death too many in the United States or Canada on fentanyl is one too many.
00:12:16.460 In regards to immigration policy, you know, the prime minister will lay out your immigration policy.
00:12:24.840 You know, once those policies are implemented, I'm assuming that the ambassador will, you know,
00:12:33.000 voice and explain those policies to the United States and how the United States responds to that
00:12:40.940 will be about what the policies are, not about what any one of us may have said two years ago,
00:12:48.960 five years ago, or 10 years ago.
00:12:50.900 That's really kind of irrelevant.
00:12:54.720 We see what's going on in the Caribbean now, on the drug front, of course,
00:12:59.560 and the military strikes on narco boats and the rest of that, pressure being put on the Maduro regime.
00:13:07.720 We haven't heard much from Canada in terms of putting on a position one way or another.
00:13:11.820 Would you like to see the Kearney government, the foreign affairs department, put out a statement,
00:13:18.740 maybe in support of what America is doing down there, as seeing as it affects not only the United States,
00:13:25.660 but Canada in terms of drugs and so forth?
00:13:28.620 Well, the, you know, Canada, if Canada wants to issue a statement of support, whatever, of course, we would welcome that.
00:13:36.680 Our policy is fairly clear.
00:13:38.780 We believe that we are involved in a war on drugs.
00:13:41.620 We've probably said that for 20 to 30 years, you know, but now we're taking it to a new level
00:13:48.620 and we're doing everything we can to interdict those drugs coming into North America.
00:13:54.180 Obviously, from our perspective, some of those drugs would be destined not only for the United States, but also, you know,
00:14:01.720 most likely also going to Canada.
00:14:04.700 So, you know, we welcome a statement from Canada.
00:14:08.020 We've not asked for a statement of support from Canada or anybody else.
00:14:12.180 And, you know, there's other issues that we're working with Canada on very closely.
00:14:15.320 We very much appreciate the leadership role that Canada has played in Haiti.
00:14:23.260 And we're asking, we have some specific asks in for the Canadian government and other allies to try to move the situation in Haiti forward.
00:14:32.920 So we're just, you know, we're taking each of those issues and working through them with our colleagues over at Foreign Affairs.
00:14:41.420 We are foreign minister and the foreign minister and our secretary of state have talked about Haiti numerous times.
00:14:48.480 And so across the board, you know, we're doing what we should.
00:14:52.020 We don't necessarily always agree on everything, but we have open channels of communication between the two
00:14:59.120 so that we clearly understand where we are both focused and the kind of help that we can provide to each other.
00:15:07.220 Is there any concern in the White House and perhaps yourself as well, that the ongoing trade tensions between Canada and the United States
00:15:14.160 might push Canada closer towards the Chinese orbit?
00:15:18.940 Is that a factor, do you think?
00:15:21.160 I don't think going into a Chinese orbit is one of the things that we worry about.
00:15:25.960 But our experience, you know, in 2000, 2000, you know, I voted to in the year 2000, 2001,
00:15:36.340 I voted against permanent normal trade relations with China.
00:15:40.500 I voted against, you know, our administration at the time.
00:15:44.020 I just didn't believe that you could trust China.
00:15:47.340 You know, the folks on the other side said, you know, Pete, you got to vote for this.
00:15:51.860 This is good for business.
00:15:53.060 This will move China into the lane of, you know, working within the rule of law. 0.96
00:16:01.880 You know, this will create much more certainty and much more openness in China.
00:16:07.480 Fifteen years later, we're at 2015.
00:16:11.400 And just about everybody in the world said, you know, we didn't improve conditions.
00:16:14.980 They actually went south.
00:16:17.160 China steals more intellectual property than it ever has before.
00:16:22.580 It cheats on trade.
00:16:24.860 And you go right down the list.
00:16:26.860 I don't think that's the kind of partner that we, as our analysis of Canada, would say,
00:16:33.580 yeah, we don't think that exactly aligns with Canada's values.
00:16:38.060 But at the end of the day, again, that's a Canadian decision.
00:16:41.420 That's an American analysis of where Canada is.
00:16:44.440 But no, we don't wake up, you know, we don't wake up in the morning or we don't wake up in the middle of the night worrying about Canada and China becoming best of friends.
00:16:54.620 Well, it must be a security issue, though.
00:16:56.100 I mean, I understand that you don't worry about it, but if that relationship, if they start playing footsie with each other to a degree that somebody starts getting uncomfortable, where it becomes a national security issue for America, doesn't that necessitate some kind of response?
00:17:13.620 Well, I mean, you know, we're talking, this is a really hypothetical, okay, that China and Canada are going to become good partners and threaten, you know, the relationship.
00:17:26.100 The relationship between Canada and America on national security or that, you know, again, what we're hearing is that and what we're seeing is that Canada is very concerned about, you know, yes, there are issues right now with canola, you know, EVs and those types of things.
00:17:47.820 But nowhere have we seen indications that Canada is saying, yeah, Pete, don't worry about the Arctic, you know, we're not worried about China and those types of things.
00:17:57.820 What we're hearing and not only hearing, but what we're seeing is Canada, Finland and the U.S. reaching a very, very significant agreement on building icebreakers in the United States, you know, with, you know, Canadian Finnish technology and those kinds of things.
00:18:21.040 And I don't think we're building icebreakers because we're concerned about how we defend the Caribbean, okay, we're concerned and jointly concerned about how we are going to jointly put together the resources to confront threats that we see in the Arctic, which we identify as potentially coming from Russia or coming from China.
00:18:46.780 So, you know, when you actually take a look at what we're doing and what we're doing together, you know, I see Canada strengthening its relationship with the United States and not questioning it when it comes to China.
00:19:01.400 I think we have just enough time to hit one more, and that's the issue of the 35s.
00:19:06.420 Ambassador, if you wouldn't mind talking about that, of course, you see Canada now kicking the tires on these Swedish fighters.
00:19:13.840 To what degree will that have an impact on trade negotiations, do you think, if they opt for the Swedish fighters?
00:19:20.900 I don't think there's a direct link.
00:19:23.300 Obviously, it has an impact on the overall relationship.
00:19:27.440 This is something that the United States and Canada partnered, began partnering on this international fighter program back in the late 90s.
00:19:37.660 Canada, I think, was the first country to sign on to this, to take it from being an international, excuse me, from being an American platform to making it in an international platform of design, development, and then actually actual production.
00:19:53.820 And so, you know, at any given time through that process, if Canada, you know, wants to kick the tires and perhaps move to an alternative solution, I think the international coalition would be disappointed by that.
00:20:12.720 But again, that's a Canadian decision.
00:20:15.000 That is not an American decision and those types of things.
00:20:18.000 And we view it as being a phenomenally successful program.
00:20:21.680 We have a huge backlog of fighters.
00:20:23.540 We've built over a thousand.
00:20:25.220 The coalition has.
00:20:26.680 I think we've got a back order of over 2,000 jet fighters.
00:20:30.380 It is the state-of-the-art plane, state-of-the-art plane with, you know, awesome technology, the latest technology in the world.
00:20:38.600 And the best technology and, you know, Canada can continue to participate in that program or can go in a different direction if it's so choosing.
00:20:52.540 I think that's actually the Chinese talking and not liking my comments. 0.99
00:21:01.680 Ambassador, thank you so much.
00:21:03.260 I want to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
00:21:07.040 Me, thank you.
00:21:07.860 And Merry Christmas to you and all of your listeners.
00:21:11.140 Thank you.
00:21:11.880 Ambassador Hoekstra.
00:21:13.480 And that is it for this edition of Straight.
00:21:15.420 I appreciate you tuning in, my friends.
00:21:17.020 Let's do it again soon, shall we?
00:21:18.400 Bye-bye for now.